THE COVERAGE

Highlights from media coverage of the Pyeongchang Olympics:

TUMBLE:

NBC analyst Luke Van Valin built up the tension as defending American gold medalist Maddie Bowman skied through her final run in the freestyle halfpipe, noting as she was in the air that Bowman had reached the point where she wiped out in her first two runs. Then it happened again. Van Valin and Todd Harris wisely stayed quiet as the camera bore witness to Bowman sobbing in the snow, recognizing the moment as a metaphor for the U.S. team’s rough showing in Pyeongchang. It was a welcome example of Van Valin stepping out of a world in which he’s too comfortable. He tends to get lost in numbers describing various moves, and “amplitude” is clearly his favorite word. We were stunned, however, to hear him talking about an earlier conversation with a judge about what they needed to see in a routine by American Brita Sigourney. Extraordinary reporting. But are Olympic judges supposed to be that forthcoming about a competition that hasn’t been completed yet?

I’M SO EXCITED:

A tie for bobsled gold! OMG OMG OMG! We thought NBC’s Leigh Diffey would blow a gasket when a Canadian team hit the same 3 minutes, 16.86 second winning time as a pair of Germans. Darned if he can’t pull history out of thin air. “It’s a tie!” Diffey said. “The last time Canada won a gold medal it was a tie as well. History repeats!” Not off your couch and cheering yet? “The Olympic sliding center has seen some amazing things these games but nothing like this!”

TWEET OF THE NIGHT:

“So great that @leighdiffey and @ JohnMorgan7 can make almost every bobsled run sound like a walk-off home run in Game 7 of the World Series.” — @zagfreak.

RUSSIAN TROUBLE:

NBC doesn’t have a great track record of talking about uncomfortable Olympic stories that are making news elsewhere, like the sexual misconduct accusations against Shaun White or Shani Davis’ unhappiness at not being a flagbearer. So it should be noted that the network addressed, in prime time and elsewhere, the doping charge against a Russian curler.

RATINGS:

It was a comparatively slow Sunday for Olympic content, with an average of 18.2 million watching on NBC, NBCSN or through streaming services in prime time. That’s down 15 percent from Sochi four years ago; the NBC-only telecast was down 23 percent. Saturday was the least-watched night of the Olympics so far, with 16.1 million viewers on NBC, NBCSN and streaming services, although that was down only 6 percent from Sochi. Viewership has largely exceeded expectations for the first half of the Olympics, but interest tends to dwindle in the second week.